Sweet September. No matter what else is going on, what stress I’m facing or what mental health issues I might be battling, there’s something about September. Even when I don’t want summer to go, when September arrives it’s like I fall in love with it all over again. Maybe it’s the air, the cool crispness of it. Maybe it’s the leaves turning amber and making the whole world smell sweet and musty. Maybe it’s the lingering feeling of that back-to-school excitement. I honestly don’t know, but especially in New England, September brings a special kind of magic.

I wish I could talk about what I’ve been writing, but it’s too close, too fragile, too sweet. Too alive, still. I need to wait for it to ripen.

I wish I could listen to the album The Huntress and Holder of Hands is releasing next week. Ever since Ireland, I’ve been obsessed with their song “Borealis” (you can listen here) and I know their album is going to be the soundtrack to my fall.

I wish I could fragment my days into shards, increase their surface area so I could fit more inside. I want to read and write and love and finally finish Until Dawn.

I wish I had the energy to make everything in my life look beautiful, instead of just a smattering of curated images.

But while wishing is not necessarily a bad thing (especially at this time of year, when it feels as though we’re moving into the season when fairy tales take place), it’s also important to recognize those goals we have already achieved.

For the first time in a long while, I’m reading again. Last week I read The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, which was a non-stop delight. For the first time possibly ever, I’m writing every single day. I’m keeping my spaces clean and tidy. I’m nurturing my relationships. I’m thinking about ways that I can better manage my life. Things are good for me right now. I hope they are for you as well.

Lately I’ve had this feverish desire to just create – to make things and to get sucked into stories. I was feeling this to some extent before I left for Ireland, but something about the beauty and peace and magic of it, paired with having some time and distance from home, brought my sense of this from focus to urgency.

Don’t get me wrong, having the inspiration and motivation to write, having the focus to be consumed by stories again, has been nice. More than nice. It’s been essential, and it’s been nourishing, and it’s been, frankly, a relief. But it does concern me a bit too. I can’t help but feel that something is a little wrong.

A week or two before my trip, I spent a day at a bookstore – an entire day. I used to do this a lot but hadn’t had the chance in well over a year.

For seven-and-a-half hours, I revised, wrote, and read. I immersed myself completely in lives that were not my own, and it felt good in a way similar to how Ireland felt good. Some of this, I’m sure, is because now that I’m done with school, I’m free to focus my creative energy on only what I want, whatever it is. Some of it is that I’m working on something that’s exciting to me. But I do worry about how much of it is just plain old escapism.

I have the sense that I’m running, maybe. Turning away maybe. Only I don’t know what from. Like there’s a monster chasing me but I haven’t seen it yet, I can only sense its presence there behind me, every once in a while hear a twig snap.

Something I learned about castles in Ireland: beautiful as they are, enchanting as they are, there’s something inherently mysterious about them too, and you have the sense that you never quite understand them completely, or know what’s going on inside them.

I’m like my own castle right now – expansive and dark in the corners, with hidden passages and ancient foundations – and even I don’t know what could be haunting my halls.

Last week I made one of my oldest dreams come true with one of my best friends. I went to Ireland! I suppose it’s a bit cliche, but Ireland has always seemed to call to me. Even as a little kid, I longed for it – before I even knew what the emotion was. I dreamed about its green, its magic, its seeming connection to the stories I loved. Going there now, as an adult, I knew to be wary – that the reality was probably not the dreamscape I had in my head. Generally, I think that’s probably a good mindset to have when we confront the things we’ve spent our lives wishing for. But Ireland is an exception.

Let me answer for you some of the questions I had (and secretly hoped to see answered in certain ways). Yes, that green is real. Yes, there are a lot of castles. Yes, there are so many medieval ruins that sometimes you just see them on the side of the road as you drive by. Yes, the people really are that nice. Yes, you can feel echoes of past life there. Yes, it is unspeakably beautiful. Yes, it truly does feel haunting. Ireland is its own myth. It’s like a legend of itself. But it exists in our reality, somehow.

We drove through a place called Healy Pass sometime around the exact middle of our trip. We found this little waterfall, pulled over to the side of the road, and just sat by it for a while, watching the water pass by over the rocks and beneath a stone bridge, listening to its crashing in the otherwise quiet hills, feeling the wind whip our hair. I could have stood in this spot forever. I felt so at peace – so at home – here. I felt like a very particular part of me, maybe a part divorced from those with which I’m most familiar, belonged there.

It must have been the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I don’t, generally, consider myself to be an especially spiritual person. I am a “true agnostic,” as Leah told me. But it’s hard not to believe in something else, even just a little bit, in Ireland. There were places, like I said, where I felt full-body peace – and there were others where I felt a not insubstantial amount of unease. The differences between these places, I couldn’t tell you – maybe it’s all imagined – but Ireland follows you home, I’ve come to realize, like a ghost.